01
Stop one
Kasbah Agadir Oufella
Babolat Court L Tennis Bag (9 Racquets): Everyone takes the cable car. Fine. Take the cable car. But you are all going to stand at the top reading the wrong thing, so come here, look above the gateway, higher, there. That is Dutch. Actual Dutch, carved into a Moroccan hilltop fortress, dating from the seventeen forties, telling you to fear God and honour the King, and the guides down at the bottom will not have mentioned it once. The fort itself goes back to the fifteen hundreds. And the walls you are photographing are the only part that came through: everything inside these walls came down in the earthquake. The walls held. The town inside them did not. Nobody puts that on the ticket, and I am from here, and I am telling you it is the single most important thing about this hill.
02
Stop two
Agadir Memorial Museum (Musée de la Mémoire d'Agadir)
Babolat Court L Tennis Bag (9 Racquets): Nineteen sixty. Fifteen seconds. This museum near the Jardin de Olhao holds the photographs, and I want it said carefully, because this is my city and people repeat it wrong. The earthquake was not enormous by global standards. It flattened Agadir because of what the city was built out of, and the death toll ran into the tens of thousands. That is the fact. Then the decision that made the modern city: they did not rebuild on the same ground. They moved Agadir south and built it again there, an entire population relocated, and that is why the town you have been walking around all morning is where it is and looks how it looks. Everything you have seen today is a consequence of this room. Take your time in here.
03
Stop three
Souk El Had
Babolat Court L Tennis Bag (9 Racquets): Right. Before you go in, listen to me, because tourists come out of Souk El Had saying it was chaos and it is the opposite of chaos. Note the walls. Note that the gates are numbered. Note that the whole interior is sorted by sector, spices in one part, leather in another, argan oil over there, and that is not an accident, somebody designed this, it is one of the biggest markets in the country and it runs on a system. Learn your gate number or you will spend an hour learning it the hard way, and no, they will not all be equally pleased to see you. And the argan oil: that tree essentially only grows in this corner of the world, which is why everything here smells of it, and yes, the goats climb it. Up in the branches. They tell visitors that like it is normal. It is normal. That is what makes it funny.
04
Stop four
Agadir bay and port
Babolat Court L Tennis Bag (9 Racquets): Everyone stands on this beach and thinks the bay is the story. The bay is not the story. Out there, in nineteen eleven, a German gunboat called the Panther dropped anchor, uninvited, and the stated reason was protecting German commercial interests, which was thin then and is thinner now. The French were moving into Morocco. The Germans wanted paying to allow it. And Europe came about ten centimetres from a general war over this exact stretch of water, before settling it with a swap of colonial territory in Africa, and then having the war anyway three years later. Nobody at the marina knows that. Meanwhile the sardine fleet went out that week and every week since, and the port is still working right there behind you. Fishermen: not once distracted by any of it. The most sensible people in this city and they always have been.
Sixty-five litres. Let that land. An expedition is decided long before you leave, by what you can carry and how well it is secured, and Agadir is a town that learned the same lesson the hardest possible way: in 1960 fifteen seconds of earthquake took the whole city down, not because the shaking was extraordinary but because of what the place had been built out of.
The Babolat Court L takes up to nine racquets across two main compartments, with three accessory pockets, carry handles and a shoulder strap, and an outer fabric of 100 per cent recycled PET with a water-repellent finish. That is a legal load, properly secured, and weatherproof. I have hauled worse in worse.
It travels everywhere from a club car park to a fortnight away, and it minds a wet morning in Agadir no more than a hot one.
Agadir did the sensible thing afterwards and moved. They did not rebuild on the same ground; they laid the city out again to the south, which is why the old kasbah on the hill above the bay now stands almost alone.
Go up and look above the gate: there is Dutch carved into a Moroccan fortress in the 1740s, telling you to fear God and honour the King, because the Netherlands were trading here in force and somebody wanted a signature on the door. The fort itself goes back to the 1500s, and when the earthquake came the walls stood while everything inside them came down.
Down in the town, Souk El Had is a walled market with numbered gates, sorted by sector — spices here, leather there, argan oil over there — and the argan comes off a tree that grows essentially nowhere else and that the goats climb. It is also perfect for a slow lap of that market with a large empty bag.
Buy on Amazon
